posted at 9:30 am on July 17, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

World Net Daily does not have a great reputation for accuracy in its reporting, but Bob Unruh has pretty solid evidence for his report on a disappearing section of a speech given by Barack Obama. On July 2nd, Obama spoke in Colorado Springs and hit themes of national service, foreign policy, and national security. In that vein, Obama proposed a rather extraordinary idea — that the US should spend as much money on a civilian national security force as it does on the military. The quote comes from 16:45 in the clip below:

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

It’s not quite clear what Obama meant by this. If he meant that the military had taken over too many functions that normally should be handled by the State Department, then that echoes what Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week. It seems to reference the costs associated with reopening consulates and doubling the Peace Corps, but that wouldn’t come close to matching what we spend at the Pentagon. The phrasing of it — a “civilian national security force” — sounds much more like a quasi-military organization operating within the US under the control of the federal government.

The media needs to ask Obama about it — but they’d have to report it first:

The stunning comments from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama that the United States needs a “civilian national security force” that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar United States Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force have mysteriously disappeared from published transcripts of the speech.

In the comments, Obama confirmed the U.S. “cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set.”

Campaign officials have declined to return any of a series of WND telephone calls over several days requesting a comment on the situation. Nor have they posted a transcript of the speech on their website.

WND points out two newspapers that printed the supposedly complete transcript of the speech, the Wall Street Journal and the Denver Post, as examples. The New York Times didn’t post a transcript, and neither did the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times. Most oddly, as Unruh points out, the Obama website doesn’t have that speech available, either.

Obama needs to clarify what he means by “civilian national security force”, and how it would be funded. After all, we have a panoply of federal security agencies already: FBI, BATF, DEA, and more, plus the National Guard on the state level. Where would Obama get the money to fund it at the same level as the Pentagon? What would its mission be, and where would it get its authority? What would be the lines of jurisdiction?

All of these questions need to be answered — but first the media has to find its objectivity and start asking about the speech and report it correctly. Obviously the Obama campaign provided them with an advance copy for the event, and just as obviously Obama deviated from it. Aren’t any journalists curious as to why?

When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it.

Wouldn’t ICE be part of a civilian national security force? Obama sounds more and more confused by the day. (h/t HA reader Jeff D)

Update II: Note to desperate Obama apologists: the Peace Corps is not a “national security force”.

Breaking on Hot Air

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I’m assuming by “well armed” Obama will give this “force” liberal training in diversity and homophobia and send them out with a pad of tickets to give to us non-politically correct people. I for one, shall remain armed and ready to “resist” such a domestic force upon it’s knock on my door…

I think Obama wasn’t talking at all about what we call “national security”; instead, like the Mad Hatter, he was trying to make the phrase mean what he wants it to mean. He was claiming that it’s a matter of national security that all the Americans get involved in their “federal” government’s efforts to provide every material “need” and right every “social injustice.” It’s not that Obama wants to build a bigger, stronger, “progressive” version of the FBI. Instead, it seems Michelle Obama wasn’t just projecting her own desires onto her husband when she made her infamous “He Will Make You Work” speech. He wants manpower for his projects; he wants the Americans working for him on whatever he proclaims to be important.

Obama does need to explain himself here. A half-trillion-dollar civilian national security force? To do what? Enforce the Fairness Doctrine and become the Thought Police against Republicans?

Is he talking about stripping the National Guard out of the military budget? Is he talking about a Federal police force, similar to the gendarmerie in France or the carabinieri in Italy? Would this violate the Posse Commitatus Act?

Wouldn’t that be ironic if the “Constitutional Law Professor” proposed something…unconstitutional!

Well, I guess Barackichelle HUSSEIN Obama just wants to be like other Muslim Dictators.

Saddam HUSSEIN had the Republican Guard, and the Iranians have the Revolutionary Guards, both of which were and are outside the Regular military forces of those Nations. Needless to say, Mr. Hilter had his SchutzStaffel, as well as the SturmAbteilung boys and the Hitler Youth. Maybe those dunderheads that have taken Obambi’s middle name will be the Cadres for this force?

Amazing… the libs go crazy over US Gummit surveillance of terrorist phone conversations (FISA stuff), but they have no complaint of the establishment of a Gestapo-like entity?

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I hushed up some bozo the other day that was prattling on about privacy issues and “evil Bush listening in on all of our phone conversations”; I asked him about government takeover of all healthcare and he said he was all for that.

I asked him what happens to his precious privacy when the government has all of his health records… suddenly, his face changed and his head seemed to have gears raking and grinding inside and about to explode; not unlike watching a car shifted into into reverse gear while moving forwards at 70+ MPH.

Now granted he was talking about increasing the size of the Peace Corps, Foreign Service, AmerciCorps, and create new civilian organizations previously, so maybe it was really just a poor choice of words. If not, what does he mean? President Chavez of Venezuela has his civilian Territorial Guards Militia to suppress internal dissent and defend Chavez’s presidency. Will President Obama need a similar civilian national security force? And why are the transcripts missing that statement and why hasn’t Mr. Obama been asked about this or explained it on his own.

Perhaps we should take Obama at his word. He is, after all, the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States.

He is clearly proposing a seperate military force, funded to the same degree that our existing military forces are. He is, quite literally, proposing a new military force.

It does not take much imagination to see that this second military force would be under whose control? Humm, lets think …….. This force would be comprised of whom?

This is the type of “leadership” that, in my opinion, quite literally lead to civil war. One group does not agree with election results, groups that have called the other side “enemy”, and with Obama they would have an alternative to acceptance and unity as Americans.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to again remind those who scoff at these notions that Obama should be taken seriously, his words taken note of, and he should be held accountable for them.

Hey Eddy, Yoohoo! You DO know that the AARP revealed his plans in this regard about a week ago, don’t you? I remarked several places my first thought was Hitler’s Brown Shirts and my second was Hitler’s youth groups.

Given his long time associates, his careful even meticulous lack of paper trail, and his rhetoric I am VERY afraid.

We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Ordnungspolizei

Translated as “order police”, Ordnungspolizei referred to uniformed police units. These were brought together on a national basis for the first time in German history by an act of the German Interior Ministry in the summer of 1936. The act decreed that the regular German police forces were to be absorbed into the SS, which would then incorporate all local, state, and national level law enforcement agencies.